


Full Circle

by irisbleufic



Category: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Queer Character of Color, Families of Choice, M/M, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-23
Updated: 2009-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:48:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's better that you learn to recognize your motives for what they are, even if barely in the nick of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

That was how it started: in one stark, breathtaking moment that could have got them both killed. 

Johnny reveled in the guts it must have taken, the sheer _nerve_. For all that their schoolmates had bullied him, Omar had always been doggedly bold. He'd recognized the driver even before the car had come to a stop, perhaps in the very same instant that Omar had recognized _him_. And now, there they were, and oh, how Johnny _shivered_ —glad, for once, of all the ratty layers he was wearing.

"Call me?" repeated Omar, hopefully.

And those dark eyes wouldn't budge from Johnny, not till they'd got an answer.

He nodded, biting back a smile, and hoped Omar would make it back to the car alive. Even once he was sure they were safe, _really_ out of harm's way, the poisonous glances that Genghis and the rest were giving him made one thing abundantly clear: if he so much as picked up a phone and started to dial and they caught wind of it, they'd pound him. Or knife him. Or slash Omar's tires next they saw him and then slit Omar's throat. Or maybe they were saying that because they were all drunk as fuck, except for Johnny.

Best wait, then. Best wait till he could find a phone box none of them ever pissed in.

 

* * *

 

Even after he'd wrested the phone from his father, taken the call, and rushed out the door, Omar fleetingly wondered if he'd done the right thing. He hadn't _needed_ to take the shortcut; he could just have easily driven the long way around and they'd all have been the safer for it. How many years had he been scanning the faces of punks and skinheads, just yearning for another glimpse like the one he and his father had caught the day of the march? Had he wanted to see Johnny again that badly, or had he needed to give his hate a face?

It didn't matter now: there they were, in the laundrette, having a look about. Johnny strolled the aisles with disaffected ease, stopping now and again to inspect the functionality (or lack thereof) in a washing machine. He touched the coin slots with a pickpocket's ease, swiftly finding the one that would come loose the most quickly in his grasp. Those fingers of his. Such long, silent hands.

Impulsively, Omar reached for one of them. Johnny blinked in surprise, but he didn't pull away. Yes, he'd do this thing. For Omar, for what Omar had rightly guessed that he felt he owed him, and that knowledge was power, was _everything_.

Omar had hurt his own father, and he was about to hurt an old friend.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't so painful, Johnny reasoned, not half as bad as he'd been expecting. Manual labor was at least good, honest work, not some string of bang-up robberies and narrow, half-arsed escapes. In those last months, he'd almost _wanted_ to get caught. Anything to force himself to face up to what he'd done, all those years he'd thrown away. He wasn't uni material, not by far, but he could've applied to college. Bricklaying. His dad had done that and had some semblance of a living. You couldn't go wrong in the structural arts.

Which was sort of what he was doing now, only there was the added perk of Omar's dark eyes below him, behind him, always watching. He wondered what his old friend thought about during those long, quiet hours that he simply stood and watched. Was he thinking that Johnny had changed, just as Johnny was thinking that _he_ had changed? Omar talked less now, and there was a faint cockiness about him that had begun to make Johnny uneasy.

"A little to the left, you said?" he asked, glancing down over his shoulder. Anything to break the oppressive silence, anything to coax the old Omar back into being. "Like this?"

Omar smiled at him, fifteen years old again, radiant. "No, tilt it just a little more—no, _yes_! Those lights will look excellent, Johnny."

 _If only you'd look at me the way you look at the fucking shop-front_ , Johnny thought, but he returned Omar's smile all the same.

 

* * *

 

The moment caught him off-guard, made his heart stop: Johnny's long fingers on his cheeks and their mouths in a gentle, yet jarring crush. The shadow of the wall seemed to loom up with the express intent of swallowing them, shielding them from prying eyes. Fleetingly, Omar could admit to himself that he'd wanted this since school, since two weeks ago, since time out of mind. Johnny's long fingers found the back of his neck, the roots of his hair. Wordless _bliss_.

It was the shouting and the ruckus that eventually cut through the haze, took Johnny away from him. Dazed, Omar followed him into the streetlights' harsh glare, half afraid. He was lord and master here, and still, those berks wouldn't _leave_. How had Johnny ever seen fit to call them his mates? Genghis was still the worst of the lot, by the look of it. He'd stuck Omar's head down a toilet in sixth-form.

"Get off with you, all right?" Johnny was saying, his tone unexpectedly gentle in spite of the fact he was shouting. "This place isn't your business. It's my job. Shove off." The punks shouted obscenities back at him, retreating.

Later, beneath guiltily stolen kisses at the steering wheel, Omar wondered if he was really in control of the situation. It didn't seem so. Johnny had offered him something better than any of Salim's illegal drugs, and he'd have been a fool not to take it.

Johnny tasted like he didn't deserve any of this, and Omar knew himself for a fool regardless.

 

* * *

 

It was perfect, _all_ of it was perfect: the shop-front, the refurbishment, the new machinery, and Omar. Omar, with his worried dark eyes and fretful manner. Omar, wondering where his father was. Omar, who tasted more of soap than sweat in the broad June sun.

" _Omar_."

He let Johnny tug him inside, past the uncut ribbon, past the new machinery, past the office door. Johnny might have been the one driving this seduction, but it was Omar who parted the curtain of beads they'd strung across the doorway to the back room, and it was Omar who smiled and breathed hard and said, without speaking, _yes_.

They'd never been skin to skin, had never fully understood what they were doing. It involved more than a little lust, sure, and the inexplicable need to _be needed_. And to hell with skin, too, and the niggling matter of color: like this, stretched out long and low and _longing_ , none of it mattered. At first, Johnny had found that he could forget if he closed his eyes when they kissed, but now, he didn't have to close his eyes at all. Acquaintance, friend, employer, lover. What the fuck did it matter what he was to Johnny? He was _Omar_. Omar, twisting under him, fearful and fearless. Omar, clutching at him like there was no tomorrow—and hell, maybe there _wasn't_. Maybe Nasser, out there dancing with his mistress, would burst in and catch them at it.

" _Shit_ ," Omar muttered, and it was finished. But, _oh_.

It was perfect. _They_ were perfect. 

And Johnny wasn't about to let some meddling younger cousin ruin it, either.

 

* * *

 

Since when had it all got out of hand, been so turned upside-down? Omar had scarcely got past the pain and confusion of watching Johnny fuck off with his old mates, had barely squared with what a mistake he'd made in ordering Johnny back to work a few hours afterward, when it was broad daylight again and Salim was there bleeding on the pavement and _oh God, not Johnny too, **not Johnny**_.

And as much as it hurt to watch him flinch from Omar's careful ministrations, it hurt even more to know that this was all his own doing. His. _Omar's_. No one's but his own. He should have been the one half beat to death out there, not Salim. He deserved it.

"...and you're beautiful," he choked, rounding off the string of words he'd been murmuring almost without meaning. Anything to break the oppressive silence, anything to coax the old Johnny back into being.

Later, at Johnny's flat, once Johnny had let Omar wash him and had got in a decent right hook, they kissed on Johnny's beaten-down mattress until the gravity of it all shook the earth and reduced them to tears. Omar had wept before, for his mother's passing, for his father's slow, rotting grief, but _never_ like this. Never in his lover's arms, and never while his lover, too, was weeping.

"Never again," Johnny was saying. "We can't do anything with it, I don't care what your uncle's friend says. I won't climb another fucking ladder, not on your life. Your dad wants to see you in college, you know that?"

"Yeah," Omar admitted, using his thumbs to brush away Johnny's tears. "I know."

"Then let's get you off to bloody college, right? You _are_ a smart bastard, after all."

Omar blinked at him, stupefied. "But what about you?"

"I'll run the laundrette till you're done, and then it'll be my turn."

And that was how it started: in one stark, breathtaking moment that might have just saved them.


End file.
